Once or Twice every year a major shift happens in the way Google scores or ranks you. The last major shift starting in July 2005 with final implementation in November 2005 was christened with the code name "Jagger". With this change, several factors have been de-emphasized or re-emphasized:

1) Reciprocal links are weighted lower, and one way related links are weight much higher.
Some people may say that reciprocal links are dead. That's simply not true, however, one way links are weighted much higher than reciprocal links. Even so, what's weighted higher after Jagger is the use of related links. Having links from websites that have the same topic or relevancy as you do. Although we seen this in the past, it's much more apparent now with a much higher weighted score versus before.

2) Paid Links and Link Farms
Even if you have a one way related link to you, it shouldn't be a paid link or a link from a link farm or other portal that is outside of Google's quality guidelines. Paid links from reputable sources will give you real traffic, but won't raise your Search Engine score or rank on Google. However being associate with a known spammers or un-reputable link farms may cause a negative score.

3) Hidden Keyword Text
Hidden keyword text for years have been known as a no-no. But now people are hiding keyword text in their Cascading Style Sheets or CSS layers. If you use Cascading Style Sheets or CSS to layer or overlap information on your web pages to achieve certain design aestics, search engines may interpret that as spam. Especially for style sheets that specifically contain hidden visibility tags may be considered spam by the search engines. Using style sheets in general is a plus on your website to ensure consistency in your fonts and overall website styles, however, anything that you use to hide keywords on purpose may be considered spam. In other words don't pack in keywords or hide keywords on purpose using CSS.

4) Overuse of Anchor Text Links and Internal Text Links
Anchor text is an important factor for reaching a high score and rank in Google, however, now with the recent changes, Google can identify obvious spamming of people using an unusual amount of links on your webpage. As long as your website is using a reasonable amount of internal links, and not on purpose making a large list of links in your navigation you should be fine.


The main rule of thumb is ethical search engine optimization techniques. Creating links and content that are relevant to your business and helpful to your customers while raising your search engine score and rank but not deploying spamming type of techniques. Use tecniques that will enhance your business and not overuse and abuse certain techniques for temporary gain.